2009-2010 will rank with 1913-14, 1933-36, 1964-65 and 1981-82 as years that will permanently change our government, politics and lives. Just as the stars were aligned for Wilson, Roosevelt, Johnson and Reagan, they are aligned for Obama. Simply put, we enter his administration as free-enterprise, market-dominated, laissez-faire America. We will shortly become like Germany, France, the United Kingdom, or Sweden — a socialist democracy in which the government dominates the economy, determines private-sector priorities and offers a vastly expanded range of services to many more people at much higher taxes.

Obama will accomplish his agenda of “reform” under the rubric of “recovery.” Using the electoral mandate bestowed on a Democratic Congress by restless voters and the economic power given his administration by terrified Americans, he will change our country fundamentally in the name of lifting the depression. His stimulus packages won’t do much to shorten the downturn — although they will make it less painful — but they will do a great deal to change our nation.

Obama probably will reduce the number of people who pay federal income taxes. That's problematic. If fewer people pay any federal income taxes fewer people will oppose expansions in federal spending. They know they won't have to pay for it. Fewer taxed means more political irresponsibility.

But it is not his spending that will transform our political system, it is his tax and welfare policies. In the name of short-term stimulus, he will give every American family (who makes less than $200,000) a welfare check of $1,000 euphemistically called a refundable tax credit. And he will so sharply cut taxes on the middle class and the poor that the number of Americans who pay no federal income tax will rise from the current one-third of all households to more than half. In the process, he will create a permanent electoral majority that does not pay taxes, but counts on ever-expanding welfare checks from the government. The dependency on the dole, formerly limited in pre-Clinton days to 14 million women and children on Aid to Families with Dependent Children, will now grow to a clear majority of the American population.

Morris doesn't expect Obama to raise taxes since Obama wants to run a huge deficit to supposedly stimulate the economy. But some of Bush's tax cuts will expire in 2010 and I do not expect Obama and Congress to renew them. Plus, inflation will come back once the economic recovery kicks in and oil prices recover. Rising interest rates will put on the pressure for smaller deficits.

Illegal immigrant amnesty for a bigger permanent lower class is the scariest possibility. Morris is dreaming to imagine these people will ever move rightward.

And Obama will move to change permanently the partisan balance in America. He will move quickly to legalize all those who have been in America for five years, albeit illegally, and to smooth their paths to citizenship and voting. He will weaken border controls in an attempt to hike the Latino vote as high as he can in order to make red states like Texas into blue states like California. By the time he is finished, Latinos and African-Americans will cast a combined 30 percent of the vote. If they go by top-heavy margins for the Democrats, as they did in 2008, it will assure Democratic domination (until they move up the economic ladder and become good Republicans).

A lot of people have been in ecstasy the last few days. But this mass delusion is not productive of good government.

Update When I call the Republican Party "road kill" I do not predict its demise or break-up. Rather it will move Left and supporters of limited government and a free market aren't going to have a real choice to vote for. As the Republican Party moves Left and picks up more moderate leftists with more left-leaning policies it will leave the Democrats with remaining members who are even more Leftist. So the Democratic Party will become even more hostile to markets and to individual rights and property.

>Simply put, we enter his administration as free-enterprise, market-dominated, laissez-faire America. We will shortly become like Germany, France, the United Kingdom, or Sweden

Except that our proportion of inherently unproductive people is a lot higher than theirs. Britain is one of the worst countries in that list and their NAM population is something like 13%, about what ours was in the 1960s.

I grew up in Hidalgo County, which is the country east of Starr. Using Starr Co. as an example is a bit unfair. It's like picking some dirt poor rural region of Appalachia, and saying that's how whites are. The Rio Grande Valley has always been rather poor, but it's not a bad place to live and grow up. Even with 85% of the population being Mexican-American, I never seriously doubted I was in America. It's gotten too crowded lately, though, due to open borders.

Anyone thinking that Hispanics are going to start voting GOP in large numbers, though, is just kidding themselves. I don't know how intelligent people like Rove and Morris continue to believe that (if they do believe it). If the Democrat really sucks and the Republican is fairly popular, then you'll see a 40% margin, as in 1984 and 2004. Otherwise, it's 28-35%. Even without the wage gap, there's just too much social history keeping them from ever favoring a small-government party.

Republicans will eventually come back. The Democrats will wear out their welcome sooner or later, but when the GOP returns they'll look as alien to Republicans today as today's Republicans would surely look to a Calvin Coolidge. There was a saying that ran, "The GOP can either change their immigration policy, or change the rest." Well, they never changed their policy of malign neglect, and now the bill is coming due.

Did you bother to click thru on the links I provided about immigration problems?

Anyone of different culture or skin color threatening: I do not find Japanese threatening. They commit crime at far lower rates than white people. I read the empirical evidence and form my opinions accordingly. Try it. Helps make the world a far more understandable place.

Randall, I am not that deluded... I merely speculated that you would prefer the high taxes of Sweden (and nice social benefits) instead of your future vision of the United States. You are indeed correct that demographs preclude the formation of Sweden in the US. People generally do not like transfers to other people who are not genetically alike. Politically incorrect, but empirically correct, of course.

You do see plenty of bad trends. Any reason to be hopeful? What are the potential inflection points? Of course, you do mention one in other posts: genetic engineering.

Regarding my own current preferences, I wish Obama would simply try to "gamble" most the stimulus money and try to create a utopia with it. To be somewhat more precise, he could fund projects that would help spark the technological singularity despite an uncertain and seemingly low chance of succeeding to spark the singularity. That seems to the only real messiah around here (of course, Obama really isn't the messiah or "the one.") But regarding socialism and capitalism... I could say one thing. The incentives in American capitalism were not conducive for long term prosperity and it resulted in a tremendous misallocation of human capital. Maybe some of those minds who were pursuing money in finance and law could have used their talents to benefit humanity by faciliting the singularity. Hopefully, Obama would try to formulate incentives for "the productive" to engage in projects that help initiate the singularity. Unfortunately, the number of "the productive" with the potential to do this is rather small, and hopefully some future eugenics program would increase that proportion of people.

Maybe the singularity is a false hope, I prefer to believe in that delusion instead of some religion.